To be furious that DD was alone when I came home??

[ApocalypseCheese]

DD has asd and a statement which covers her from the moment she leaves home to the moment she gets home. IE she is never unsupervised for her own safety.

Got home from shopping earlier and the poor thing was sat on the sofa panicing, one phonecall to the school reveals there were hardly any kids on the transport bus so dd was home quite a lot earlier than usual.
The front door wasnt locked as i've lost my front door key, dp had left for work earlier and left it open for me/the builders.

Not good enough, these people are trusted to care for my child when i'm not there, heads will roll in the morning

Orm, the point about the OPs dd is that her SN means that she can never be left safely unsupervised; this is in her statement.

I remember my dd coming home fuming because the driver of the disabled taxi was too lazy to get out of the car himself so would send the autistic boy to knock on the door for the next child. Dd of course knew that this was a boy who was not even allowed to walk alone between classrooms within a locked school as he was not safe- and this driver thought he would be fine crossing the road. A good job somebody else was looking out for him.

Oh. Sorry. Didn't read the thread properly.(say two hail mary's and don't do it again).In which case NBU at all.

YANBU

Before having DD I taught privately. Once, a parent failed to pick up her daughter after the lesson. I made sure I stayed with her, gave her a drink, reassured her etc for three quarters of an hour before the mother turned up (she had been stuck in traffic following a fatal motorway accident). What I am trying to say is that if you have a child under your care, you do not just abandon them because you're on the clock. That driver should have pinned a notice to the door with a phone number and taken the OP's child with him or her on his other drop-offs. It's a one-off thing and maybe the driver would be annoyed with the parent, but why should the child suffer because of that?

All I can think of it that they assumed your child let herself into the house as it was unlocked. I don't blame you for being scared and furious - but maybe it was just an unfortunate set of misunderstandings.

Yes, the transport people should have waited to hand your dd over to someone. However, what if you'd broken down and been 20 minutes or more late. Some of the other children on the transport could well have been taken out of their comfort zone in not getting home/sticking to a routine leading to other parents complaining.

But, deep down you do know that you have been careless in 2 respects:-

1. you need to have a bigger safety margin of time for being home in advance of the transport arriving at your house

2. you needed to have sorted out the key situation or not left the house until you had sorted it.

Lessons to be learned all round IMHO.

I don´t think OP should have posted elsewhere.

For me though-more clarity about her daughter needing to be "handed over" iyswim.

OP-when you speak to the escort this afternoon, perhaps you would be kind enough to let us know their reasons.

why sitdown? she was 10 mins earlier than her dd has ever been in 6 years! unless something has changed, why on earth should she be earlier?

sitdownpleasegeorge - your firstsentence says it all. there is, though, absolutely no room for a "but" or a "however".

transport should have handed the OP's dd over to OP (or designated adult). that's it. end of story.

there is no other alternative.

this is a child who must, for her own safety, be supervised at ALL times.
yes, the Op could have ben delayed by 20 mins or more - she could have been delayed for hours if her bus had broken down, etc. what should she do? never leave the house in case somehtign happens and she is delyaed?!

transport services shoud have a plan in place for when somethign like this happens - because, with the best will in the world, it is going to happen at some point. it must be a very rare parent who gets through the whole of the school years without ever being a second late (which the OP wasn't - she was early for the usual agreed drop off time)

that plan is usually either to wait, or to continue on the rounds and come back again later - depending, I suppose on whether OP's dd is at the beginning of the drop off orund or nearer the end

I agree with silverfrog. I hate this assumption that because someone posts in ibu it is essentially their fault if they get flamed "if you didn't want to be flamed then you shouldn't have posted in ibu" is just a bloody poor excuse for people who think it's their god-given right to be nasty to whoever the hell they want, seemingly without consequence. Ibu is mn at its worstIMO.

As for constantly having a go at the op about the unlocked door, well no, it wasn't the wisest move, but I bet we've all been there. I know I've certainly gone to bed and left the back door unlocked also until recently I would leave my house and pull the door shut behind me, and it would lock as it closed. It wasn't until I left my keys inside one day that a friend's dh opened it with a credit card in about ten seconds that I realized that what I thought was my secure house actually wasn't secure at all, and started double locking the door after that.

And just how early do people think the op should be home? Ten minutes before the bus would be due to arrive? half an hour? an hour? what if the school had to close unexpectedly and the children be brought home - should the op in fact never go out in case her daughter were to arrive unexpectedly on her doorstep?

Sitdown - is there some rule that says you should never leave your house unlocked?!

i went out the other day for an hour and left the front door wide open

yep, I used ot regularly forget to close my front door when dd1 wa smsall - we'd leave the house, and I didn't close the door as it woudl always stick a bit, adn I was trying ot stop dd1 running into the road.

strap in dd1, gettign smacked around the head in the rpocess (dd1 is ASD) and trying ot avoid general injuries, strap in dd1 when she didn't want ot sit in seat, etc

once that battle was finished, I hopped in and off we went.

I lost count of the times I wold come back to my front door swinging gently on it's hinges...

now I know that's not very sensible, but i wasn't aware there was a rule about it (particularly in relation to school transport )

AC, YANBU at all! If a careplan or statement says a physical handover has to happen, it has to happen.

And for those saying "Maybe she was handed over to a builder" there is usually a list of people this handover is allowed to happen to.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I will say this.

Alouiseg, I am SO glad I had to have transport to college due to being visually impaired, not being able to drive, the other colleges in the area not offering my courses and there being no bus stops I could safely access with my impairment.

I'm sure my friend with cerebral palsy was SO glad she had transport all through school. Never mind all the surgery and pain and problems she's had, that door to door service makes her so lucky.

We're both so lucky aren't we?

There's no sense of entitlement, there's nothing like that at all. These services exist so people can access the same education as their peers, or education that meets their needs.

Alouiseg, the OP didn't make me angry at all. Your posts early in this thread DID.

OK, the OP needs to get the lock situation sorted, and maybe a 10 minute window isn't enough, but the system, in this particular instance, did not work as it should have and she shouldn't be flamed for that.

do you think the escort was watching football?

op yanbu, now that you have given the full facts, that it's a handover service.

anything could have happened to your dd and i understand how shocking that must have been, for whatEVER reason you were late, or in this case that she was early.

YANBU at all! That is outrageous - they have to make sure an adult is home, not just presume it. You wouldn't just leave her at the bus stop would you on the basis that 'well the bus should be here at 8am so it must be - BYE!' - no, that would be your fault. This is 100% their fault. You are completely right to go ballistic at the bus company over this, and I am sure other parents with kids who get the school bus home will agree. Those who think YABU clearly don't understand the essential nature of the person handing over ensuring that they hand over to an actual real live tangible existing at home ADULT! and not simply an unlocked front door.

your poor DD. good luck. i am totally and utterly with you on this one!

It's amazing how many posters thought that op was being a bit unreasonable, not to mention rude, then changed their stance half way through.

I stand by my feelings that op was bu, I also think that she screwed up, she knows she screwed up and is apportioning blame elsewhere to assuage her guilt.

The rest of us on this thread don't know a couple of things either.........it is possible that the school may have closed earlier due to the football match, it is also possible that the school were far more prompt than usual in letting the pupils out and the roads were obviously empty. We also don't really know if ops daughter just walks into the house every afternoon by herself.

We do know that the op is careless enough to live with a front door that doesn't lock.

Sometimes it is the unsaid things that speak volumes.

my god alouiseg, that is possibly the mostjudgmental piece of twaddle to ever brighten up my day. you have no idea. end of.

I think the difference is that we didn't know the rule is handover to a specified person.

"We also don't really know if ops daughter just walks into the house every afternoon by herself. "
yes we do, the OP says she waits outside for the bus

oh fgs, Alouiseg, give it a rest.

if the school had closed early, whether fo rth footbal or any other reason, then they needed ot let the OP know.

it doesn't matterif the pupils were prompter out, or roads empty, or whatever - the transport arrangement is drop off between certain times. the OP was there at that time - the bus was early (what is it about htis you do not understand?)

we do nowwhether the OP's dd walks into the house by herself every day or not - the OP has stated, several times, that there is a personal handover (again, what is it about htis you do notunderstand?)

whether the OP locks her door, leaves it ajar, or wide open with a massive neon sign saying "everyone welcome here" is beside the point - transport has a duty to hand over the dd, and make sure there is a responsible adult looking after her.

they failed ot do this.

i think, as in a conversation, people are actually allowed to change their stance half way through. IF new information is brought into the conversation.

Alouise - The op should have been in - yes, maybe she should.
The op shouldn't leave her door unlocked - no, maybe she shouldn't.

But the fact remains that it is required to hand over a child under the rules of the school transport. You must hand over. If you fail to do so, you are wrong.

I don't know how else to highlight it to you without hiring a light aircraft and flying a banner over your house.

also the fact she leaves her front door open is neither here nor there - that just means she is not overly bothered about the material contents of her house. however she is obviously really extremely concerned about the welfare of her daughter, hence the statement and the door to door bus service she has no doubt had to fight to get put in place. There is nothing at all in this incident that indicates OP is anything other than a great concerned and attentive mum.

well I changed my view over the course of the thread as the full picture emerged and I realised I was thinking about it in the context of my own (NT) school age children, and without the realisation that the child has a statement in place which says she must NOT be left unsupervised, and that the agreement in place says that a HANDOVER must take place.

They didn't fulfil their contract, and a child was left at risk.

I wonder if this analogy might help, LouiseG?

You are collecting your friend's 4-yr-old from school.

You said you'd drop her home at 3:30.

You get to friend's house at 3:10, the door isn't locked, so you merrily pop her child through it and leave.

You don't look or call first to see if your friend is there.

Well, would you?

"I don't know how else to highlight it to you without hiring a light aircraft and flying a banner over your house."

oh please don't do that Hecate.......didn't an MP/minor party leader do that around the election and ended up crashing???